This morning, I experienced the nerd equivalent of a Black Friday $50 iPad sale. At 07:00 CET, the first batch of the much-anticipated Raspberry Pi went on sale, and while Raspberry Pi itself was very properly prepared, the two large international retailers actually selling the device weren't - despite warnings from Raspberry Pi about the enormous amount of traffic that would come their way, the two sites crumbled to dust within seconds. There's good news too - the cheaper model A has seen its RAM doubled at no additional cost.

Just because their distributors didn't have strong enough servers doesn't excuse their poor communication.

In fact it makes it worse.

I *STILL* don't know if it's possible for a US resident to pre-order a device, or if it was ever possible. (Or if it will become possible in the near future.)

A little more communication would have translated into a lot fewer frustrated clicks on the distributors' websites.

If my only hope of finding answers to obvious questions is to keep clicking hopelessly on servers that are failing, then of course that makes things worse. How could it not?

If USAians, and others outside the UK, had been better informed and either been given direct links or been clearly told that the device was not yet available in their region, the servers might have stayed functional.

it is possible. The us distributor screwed up royally ths morning by adding a $20 surcharge. They fixed and removed the surcharge in the afternoon, but not until after there was a *lot* of howling and complaining.